>>>I know there a countless alternate ways of doing this but is there a way to display line breaks tucked inside a memory variable displayed in a window
>>>I suspect it's one of those 'filetostr strtofile conversions' but i'm having trouble with the syntax
>>>thanks for your help
>>>

>>>mes = 'I need the line break'+chr(13)+'To be displayed in this window'+chr(13)+'any suggestions??'
>>>activate window temp
>>>? mes  &&& all I get here is 'any suggestions'
>>>

>>
>>Don't use ? to output message. Use messagebox. Also, you may want to try chr(13) + chr(10) instead of just chr(13).
>
>thanks Naomi - actually your chr(10) by itself works fine. Any reason why I shouldn't just use that?

To put out a message a messagebox is the right tool. Users have learned it, so do not change it.

If you need it better then the common messagebox, build your own, check downloads or VFPX for something better. But do not change the general idea.